Dyspeptic retired Marine wife/tech wench attempts to enlighten the great unwashed of the blogosphere while dodging snarky commentary from the local knavery.

April 08, 2008

Watching the Petraeus Hearings

First of all, let me take this opportunity to say that on any continuum of egregiously unrepentant asshollery that runs from 1 to 10, Joe Biden still unequivocally scores a triumphant 11. He's trying to pin Petraeus down on a "1 to 10 rating" of how bad/how good things are. Of course the poor guy has no choice but to answer.

Got oversimplification, Senator? It's the American Bandstand approach to war: "Well Senator: people are dying... but on the other hand there's a really groovy backbeat, so I give it a 6 or a 7."

"Next?"

Biden may well win today's sweepstakes for dumbest question. But Chris Dodd is currently giving him a run for his money: "Gen. Petraeus: does combat stress turn all our soldiers into psychotic killers with no ability to tell right from wrong, or is it reading the NY Times that drives them freaking batsh*t?"

Comments

Cass, do you find Senator Barbie annoying? Just imagine having this asshat for a Senator. California has given our country DiFi, Barbie, and Pelousi. We are probably going to be smacked with reparations. Can one sue for political malpractice?

He's trying to pin Petraeus down on a "1 to 10 rating" of how bad/how good things are.

actually, Biden asked Petraeus on a scale of 1 to 10 how much progress we've made in Iraq. not an unreasonable question when “We have spent less in six years in Afghanistan than we spend in three weeks in Iraq.” eh?

I will make the correction. However, I am not sure putting someone on the spot for a '1-10 rating' that has to be answered right away makes for thoughtful analysis, are you?

There are any number of factors that would go into such an assessment, and in the final analysis Petraeus is not the man who will make the call on what the criteria are for our withdrawal. So... how does he determine where the "10" is, especially in the 60 seconds he has to formulate an answer?

Mark, I was in and out during her few minutes but my hands were itching to strangle her.

Why is it that women always go out of their way to justify the WORST stereotypes about our sex? I know there are intelligent women out there who are capable of doing a job without resorting to flights of hysterics. She was emotional and silly. I was embarrassed for her.

I cannot help but believe that a generation or so from now, the video of hearings like this will make it incredibly easy to identify with excruciating clarity just who the jackasses were at a time of significant national peril. How would you like to be a younger relative of these ding-dongs when that time comes? "....so it was your grandmother who acted like a sniffling fool?"

For me, I have developed an aversion to just about anything that comes out of the mouth of a politician, particularly those in the majority party. I am sure there must be some who remember they are Americans (and don't have to apologize for it), but it seemed like only the a$$holes were sounding off today.

I can only hope that those who are serving the nation in harm's way were too busy today (and will be that way tomorrow) to take in this nauseating spectacle. They deserve better......

I can only hope that those who are serving the nation in harm's way were too busy today (and will be that way tomorrow) to take in this nauseating spectacle.

AFN has long-since morphed into CNN-Lite and ran the hearings pretty much uncut (except for the mandatory "Report Sexual Misconduct" and "Don't Let Your Kids Play On Construction Sites" breakaways). AFN plays non-stop in the DFAC (sorry -- "chow hall"), sorta redolent of 1984, but it diverts your attention from what the food tastes like.

Bottom line: Most of the folks around me viewed the hearings as comic relief -- "Congress' Most Embarassing Videos" was one of the few printable comments...

Biden got real serious at the very end when he told both Petraeus and Crocker that they needed $150 million for the new government in Pakistan and they didn't have it. Sounded like the Senate version of nickels and dimes.

I don't think it's a dumb question at all. Biden was simply asking what the level of progress Petraeus believes has been acheived, particularly relevant in light of the General's testimony last September when he testified that, if in March 08 he saw very little progress, he would "be hard pressed to recommend that [continuation of 130,000 to 160,000 troop levels] at that point in time."

I may not expect my doctor to know for certain when my cancer will be in remission but I sure as hell want to know if we're making progress in the battle.

I wasn't able to see the whole thing ... but Levin annoyed me He asked if the Iraq government planned and resourced the Basrah operation, Petraeus told him it could have been better (in 25 + years in the military I can think of very few operations that you couldn't say the same for) and Levin barked back give me a straight answer ... uhh, he did ... Petraeus just refused to say the entire thing was a disaster or in effect wouldn't say what Levin wanted to hear.

Biden is trying to oversimplify a complex situation so that later he wave it about and say (dismissing all the detailed information he was given) "No one ever told me it was going to turn out this way!).

They did this with his brief back in January too. He gave them extremely detailed and cautious assessment and they demagogued it after the fact and tried to pretend he hadn't warned them of the difficulties. This is what Congress does all the time, and it is beneath them.

Biden was simply asking what the level of progress Petraeus believes has been acheived...

Biden was asking Petraeus to quantify a quality.

I see my pilot-cadets progress each day in both language skills and airplane stick-wiggling, but I can only base my judgement on what I know of each individual. I know where each one's *1* started, but I can only guess where each one's *10* will be.

Using Biden's rather vague numerical metric, certain parts of Iraq are already at 9.5 -- others appeared to be 8 until local conditions slipped them to 6 or 7. A few areas appeared to be solid 3s on the scale until the "Awakening" -- and jumped to 8 or more virtually overnight.

But who defines what *10* is? For some, a 10 would be a unified Iraq with fully-operational infrastructure, mutual inter-(and intra-)sectarian tolerance -- in the best sense of the word -- boasting a highly-literate, terrorist-free populace. For others, a 10 would be a partitioned Iraq functioning as a commonwealth or as an association of separate republics, uniting as common interest or external threat arose. For still others, a 10 would be an immediate US pullout with GWB being ridden out of Washington on a rail as part of the exodus.

Yes, but I think you have to concede that a more granular scale would require the esteemed Senator to remove his shoes in order to follow the math. Even then he'd be anatomically limited to a scale from 1 to 20.

Not much is beneath slime, Cass, except stuff living below sea level in the darkest pits of the oceans.

For some, a 10 would be a unified Iraq with fully-operational infrastructure

For others a 10 would be Iraq functioning like a Democrat welfare state. For some others, a 10 would be making Iraq into what happened with Vietnam.

Petraeus would have been fully justified in answering that Iraq is a 1 on the road to where the Democrat leadership wants it and a 7 in terms of progress that good men and women want Iraq to become.

Unless, of course, you are hell bent on shifting the goalposts.

Cheating involves more stuff than just shifting the goal posts. Knee capping the enemy team’s kicker. Blinding the enemy’s coach. All things are grist for the war, Cass, where Democrats follow no rules except the rules that they benefit from following.

If it works, do it. If it feels good, do it. If it ends up killing some strangers you never cared about, well do that as well except make sure nobody sees you doing it.

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